THANK YOU MR. MASPERO
On the 11th of April, the French publishing world lost one of its great figures: François Maspero, founder of the Maspero publishing house in 1959, which became the Editions La Découverte in 1983.
In some ways we could say that François Maspero represented on his ownembodied the whole publishing trade. Having begun his career as a librarian at the age of 23, he became a publisher as at the same time well as a founding a journal’s director. Meanwhile, he also worked as a translator, putting into French the works of Joseph Conrad and John Reed – among others – and did his own writing. In 1990, he received a price for his work with the photographer Anaik Frantz, Roissy Express: Journey Through the Paris Suburbs.
But most of all, we’ll remember François Maspero as an engaged intellectual who kept continued to publishing polemical books despite the censorship. For many years, thanks to the Editions Maspero publishing house has been a preservedthere was a place in publishing for independent and diverse thinking. The publishing house was, especially famous for its leftist list, including . It published such names as Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Maitron and Georges Perec, and . And it defended such themes such as criticism of colonialism, Third World’s issues, or history of the anarchist’s movement history.
François Maspero showed us that a publisher is not only someone who sells books, but someone who believes in the power of words to convey new ideas and open minds. And for that, we thank him.
To go further, read one of the last interviews of François Maspero, an attempt of self-portrait where he describes himself as an “organic intellectual”.
Or see François Maspero, les chemins de la liberté, a movie that was shown for the first time at the Maison des Metallos last March.